What is the value of a teacher? You might think very little judging by the variability in pay rates between countries. The question however is: How do you objectively value the worth of a teacher?
Education in most countries is publicly administered, such that the negotiation of pay rates comes down to arbitration or some formula. i.e. Inflation-adjusted pay rates.
The reality however is that teachers are inclined to move away from such arbitrarily asserted pay rates; and for good reason, they are divorced from the facts. There are any number of factors which affect the value and worth of a teacher. The question is - how do you gauge them. It is a basis for utter disagreement. The market of course offers a solution. The market pits buyers against sellers. It compares your market value against others. Teachers would assert their value in terms of pay per class, with certain hours of preparation, with perhaps a bonus incentive for good student performance. This would necessarily entail accountability standards so that teachers could be rewarded for better effort.
Does this seem reasonable? I would think so, because this is the way most of us engage in the market place. Its not a universal rule, but its the fundamental premise of how markets function. Now lets look at the pay claims for NZ teachers. Firstly they have the misfortune of dealing with a monopoly. Clearly they are happy about this because they never attempt to demand privatisation of the schools, so you know they are not about accountability or fair pay.
What they do embody however is extortion. Just as they are employed by an 'effective monopoly', their strongly unionised labour force effectively acts as a monopoly supplier of teachers. You can therefore imagine that you will get two self-righteous bodies vying for the upper hand. The problem is that there are students in between. The implication is that you have both parties using extortion in order to get what they want:
1. Teachers can go on strike to demand higher pay, better conditions
2. The Education minister can repudiate any claims, reasonable or not, knowing that teachers have no where else to go.
When people are subject to extortion they tend to get very self-righteous. The problem of course is that its not simply an inflation adjustment. Teaching has changed. More demands are made upon them, and their performance is not entirely within their control. They don't parent their students, they don't teach them manners, they might not have the resources, they might not have access to the training they need. The implication is that the expectations placed upon them might be entirely unreasonable given what they have to work with. We might ask then, why do we have this highly centralised system which precludes the market finding more reasonable solutions. Private education is no magic panacea, particularly if its outcomes are driven by government-inspired 'pricing formulas', and its administrators have poor management skills. Privatisation can be a dangerous solution in such a context. We have already witnessed several flawed privatisations in NZ.
Clearly though this industry is ripe for a solution....but instead we have two parties trying to extort concessions from each other with the kids suffering in between. It is not to unlike the breakdown of a family, where the parents use the kids as an instrument of abuse.
In the latest NZ Herald article, we have John Key suggesting that NZ teachers ought to accept the nominal pay increase because the government is under financial strain. That strikes one as unfair because there is no reason why teachers ought to carry the burden. Its a bad argument. 'A good offer under the circumstances'. This is bad politics. Perhaps John Key ought to drop politician salaries instead, or reduce our contribution to Afghanistan, which was only ever a symbolic gesture and a little practice in 'real war' for the troops.
Without knowing the generosity of previous teacher pay increases, or comparative rates of pay for teachers, it is impossible to establish if teachers are over or under-paid. The reality is that teachers are probably overpaid because they are not advocating privatisation of education, in which case their salaries would be determined by the market. This would at the very least achieve a relativist standard of value, and reward objectivity. That is the theory if there is sufficient respect for logic. That is of course less likely in a political system based on extortion...sorry 'democratic correctness'....tyranny of the majority. That is after all why teachers are losing. The indifferent, passive majority cares little about the gripes of teachers...and they might even be contemptuous of them for disrupting their working lives. After all, governments are just so reasonable. I just believe every word that John Key says. He's so handsome.
If I assume that teacher salaries were previously reasonable, then the current pay offer by the government looks a little low. i.e. They are offering 0.5% plus a $1000 bonus worth 1.5%, which equals 2%. Given inflation of 2% before the GST impact, that does not look generous...but they may have had huge increases under the Labour government. The teachers are seeking 4%, plus a lot of other administrative cost burdens live teacher training, smaller class sizes. These issues strike me as government government responsibilities. I agree with the sentiment, but if they want these things, let them support privatisation, which would give parents a choice, as opposed to having teachers extorting government with kids school hours in order to impose their 'delusional' standards of care. Given that teachers are not 'market savvy', we cannot attribute market realities as one of their strong points.
